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pogo2posterFINAL2The Last Pogo Jumps Again studies the evolution of Toronto from small town to big city and it’s pop/counter-culture lifestyle during the early and mid-70s.  It centers around the first wave of Toronto punk rock and new-wave music, from the Ramones playing the New Yorker Theatre in ’76 through the police shutting down Teenage Head and causing a riot at the Horseshoe Tavern’s infamous “The Last Pogo” concert in December 1978.

London had the Sex Pistols, New York had the Ramones, but Toronto had a punk movement all it’s own.  The Toronto landscape by the late ’70s was forever changed with the infusion of the DIY/Punk/Alternative Culture(s) movement.  Six years in the making, The Last Pogo Jumps Again successfully explores the whys and wherefores of what was arguably one of the most exciting but misunderstood movements in Toronto’s history.

The DVD contains the 204 minute documentary, plus over a 100 minutes of added material, and a snazzy 24-page booklet.  Check the Shop for details on where you can purchase it.

The Last Pogo (1978) is the documentary that chronicled the last punk rock show at the Horseshoe Tavern when it was run by legendary Toronto promoters The Garys (Topp and Cormier) featuring The Scenics, Cardboard Brains, The Secrets, The Mods, The Ugly, The Viletones and Teenage Head. The Last Pogo was released on DVD in 2008 to great reviews.  Available at the Shop.

john cale

The New Yorker Theatre, Toronto, 1976/1977
October 27th, 2015
The New Yorker in the ’30’s when it was known as The Astor. In 1976, with The Original 99 Cent Roxy still pulling in crowds in the east end, Gary Topp and partner Jeff Silverman opened The New Yorker Theatre, on the Yonge Street Strip, fifty yards south of where the indie underground cinema CineCity once stood. The pinball parlour Funland was across street, and on the next block south ...
Cinema and Punk
October 22nd, 2013
The opening shot of the title sequence for our film The Last Pogo Jumps Again is a photo of an empty movie theatre, The Allenby, opened in 1936.  It would become The Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre (just 243 steps from the Greenwood subway station!) in 1972, run by Gary Topp.   As Stephen Perry of the radio show Equalizing X Distort (on the University of Toronto’s radio ...
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October 26th, 2011
2000 Feet and Closing: Visibility 1-7
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March 15th, 2011
We did one more interview last week with the Cardboard Brains‘ guitarist and co-founder Vince Carlucci.   We’ve got just two more people on our wish list before we finally stop production and focus on post.
5000 Feet and Closing: Visibility 1-9
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March 15th, 2011
Yea, we know:  John Cale doesn’t have much to do with our epic documentary The Last Pogo Jumps Again, except maybe for the fact that he played the New Yorker Theatre in the spring of  ’77, but we just love this song, and now that we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak, it’s appropriate.
That Ancient Teenage Dream
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April 18th, 2010
Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain.” The Dadaists in the 1920’s turned the artworld on its head by doing stuff like turning urinals on their end and calling it Art. The Velvet Underground 1966; John Cale in the foreground. “And there would go the secret plot, the piss had missed the hole in the pot, like that ancient teenage dream, from soul to poisoned soul to poisoned soul,” so sang John Cale post ...
All Touch
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March 11th, 2010
Today we talked with one half of Rough Trade, guitarist/writer Kevan Staples.  Kevan is one of many from the punk/new-wave scene in Toronto who ended up with careers in film and TV, currently a partner at Toronto post-sound house Rhythm Division, and composing scores for films and TV series.  In April we catch up with the Auntie Diva herself, Carole Pope.   (Yea, yea, yea, we know —  Rough Trade weren’t ...
Hemingway Hated Disco Music
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February 27th, 2010
An absolutely rollicking week at Pogo H.Q.: We topped off last week by chatting with fangirl Erika Larner, who’s lineage goes from  Gary Topp’s Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre, where many seeds of punkish suberversion were planted,  to the Ontario College of Art when it was directed by avante-garde administrator Roy Ascott to helping and hanging out with OCA-based bands like The Cads, and Oh Those Pants, and selling beer at ...
More Buildings about Food and Songs, Part One
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February 20th, 2010
The B-movie Caged Heat was shown often at Gary Topp’s The Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre in Toronto in the mid-seventies.  Written and directed by Jonathon Demme, with an original score by John Cale.   Demme would go on to direct (among many films), The Talking Heads‘ concert film Stop Making Sense. John Cale would play the New Yorker (Gary Topp‘s new venue) theatre in February of 1977, fanning the flames that ...
Hungry Chuck Biscuits
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November 1st, 2009
Xenia at The Last Pogo 30th Anniversary Bash in 2008;  photo Edie Steiner The Last Pogo Jumps Again co-director Kire Paputts interviewed ex-B-Girl Xenia last week, and discovered that besides somehow still looking nowhere near her real age, she’s a Yoga instructor, and maybe that’s a clue.  Over the next few weeks we’ll be chatting with original Diode and Johnny & The G-Rays drummer Bent Rasmussen, back in town after some ...
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